


Spoons

by sionnach_glic



Series: Spoons [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Spoilers for 8x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 14:32:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18740989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sionnach_glic/pseuds/sionnach_glic
Summary: Spoilers for 8x04.He gives her a critical look. “Arya, I don’t even know my letters, let alone how to use a fork. How am I going to write bloody ravens?”She rolls her eyes. She’s seen the man use a fork, more than once and long before he joined the company of lords and ladies, but she decides to play along with his self-pity for a moment, tilting her head, raising an eyebrow. “Well you know how to use a spoon. Maybe just stick with those for a while.”





	Spoons

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you reading my other Gendrya fic you know I prefer book!Arya and book!Gendry. However, I'm thoroughly disappointed with the writing staff of Thrones and how they have blundered their own characters' arcs within their own canon. They've been doing strange things with Arya's arc for several seasons now, but I'm more interested in when they decided Gendry was such a tool. Did they steal Gendry's lines in 8x04 from a 1980s Danielle Steele novel? 
> 
> They might have.
> 
> I suppose we'll never know (along with a boatload of other things, like the PtwP, the deal with the NK, why scorpions defy physics, and what the hell is Bran?). So, for this story, I work entirely within show canon up to 8x03. I change the dialogue in 8x04.
> 
> Hope this waters your crops.

“Lord of Storm’s End?” She echoes quietly, her eyes remaining on her target, when he announces Daenerys has made him a Barratheon. She’s still in her stance, not quite sure she believes it. She glances at him, all of it there on his face.  


Terror. Terror that he’ll somehow screw this up. 

He shifts his eyes away, drawing an arrow from her quiver, twirling it slowly between his fingers. “Thing is . . . I don’t know how to be lord of anything.” The words are quiet, as if he’s confessing some terrible secret he’s never shared with another soul. Maybe he is. 

She comes out of her stance then. “Nobody knows how to be a lord of anything until they _are_ one,” she tells him.

He gives her a critical look. “Arya, I don’t even know my letters, let alone how to use a _fork_. How am I going to write bloody ravens?” 

She rolls her eyes. She’s seen the man use a fork, more than once and long before he joined the company of lords and ladies, but she decides to play along with his self-pity for a moment, tilting her head, raising an eyebrow. “Well you know how to use a spoon. Maybe just stick with those for a while.” 

He glances at her, and she watches as a war rages between a scowl and a grin, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, the grin winning. “Be serious,” he says, but his face isn’t. He laughs softly. “You’re infuriating, you know that?” 

She ignores that, waiting, watching as his face becomes grim again. 

He places the arrow back in the quiver. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits. 

He isn’t wrong. He’s going to be in over his head, for a while, for a long, long while. But if half the things Davos had told her about him were true-about where he had gone after they parted, what he had done to survive, about his actions beyond the Wall-he’s more than capable.

And she doesn't need Davos to know that.

She inhales, setting her bow aside. “Do you remember when we were with Yoren? The night Cersei’s men attacked us?”

He blinks, confused, but then she sees when his face latches onto some memory of that time, grimacing. “It was the first night I killed a man,” he says, more to himself than to her. Then: a fond smile, as his eyes shift to hers. “You were ready to skewer every one of them,” he murmurs, pointing to Needle.

She remembers. She had been, but this is about him. “You charged after the Lannister men.”

He frowns. “It was that or die.”

She shrugs, shifting her eyes to the target. Her left arm is sore, but she should practice more. “You could have surrendered,” she tells him.

“Surrender?” He says. She glances back him. He shakes his head angrily. “Arya, they _killed_ Yoren.”

“They did,” she agrees. “And you _could_ have surrendered. Only . . . you didn’t.” 

His brows pinch together, arms crossed, defensive. “Because it was what was right.” 

She turns her back to him, reaching for her bow again. “And Harrenhal,” she says, trying to sound indifferent, pretending this is the lying game, that she’s still no one, that Gendry is the waif. Gendry might believe it, but Jaqen wouldn’t. He would hear the lie. He would hear how it mattered to her, how it meant she was still _someone_. “Do you remember that?” 

“No,” Gendry says quickly. _Too_ quickly. 

She looks at him over her shoulder. “Liar.” 

He snaps his eyes to hers. They’ve never talked about it. Not in all their years traveling together. Not in the time since they’ve reunited. They’ve never talked about all the horrific things that happened to them there. She draws back an arrow. She imagines the Mountain’s face on the target.

“Arya—”

“Do you remember it?” She lets the arrow fly.

“Aye,” he says hoarsely. 

“Our first night there, in the rain—”

“Seven hells, Arya, I remember. You whispered those damned names, shivering all through the night. I hardly slept next to you.”

She comes out of her stance abruptly, staring at him. She hadn’t expected him to remember that part.

He’s never liked it. Her list.

She sets the bow aside again, crossing her arms. “Yet you didn’t try to fight the Lannisters’ men _then_ ,” she points out.

His brows slam. “There were thousands of them, Arya.” He snorts bitterly, shaking his head. “What do you want me to say? That I was a cowar—” 

“You were _wise_.”

He looks at her, staggered, before his gaze shifts away, but it’s plain on his face that that’s not a word he’s ever thought to use to describe himself. Something about that irritates her. 

“Gendry,” she murmurs, waiting for him to look at her and when he does she tells him, “You _know_ when to act.” She takes his hand. “But you also know when _not_ to.”

His brows are pulled in. It’s a face she knows. He’s worn it before. Before the Hound, before she became no one, before he became a lord. It’s his thinking too hard face. She nearly smiles.

“ _That’s_ what being a lord is about,” she tells him, releasing his hand, thinking of her father. “It isn’t about knowing your letters. Letters can be _learned_. It's about doing the right thing, even when it's hard.”

His brows are still pulled in, but a small lop-sided grin is fighting to be their companion now. “How do you do that?” He asks softly. 

“What?” 

He raises an eyebrow. “Make me feel like I’m not an idiot.” 

She gives him a look. “You’re not an idiot, _stupid_.”

His smile is roguish. “Can I get that in writing, Lady Stark?”

She rolls her eyes, crossing her arms, knowing when she’s being mocked. "You wouldn't know how to read it," she snorts. 

His smile only deepens. “I'd still like evidence. I think you’ve called me stupid more times than I can cou—” 

She shoves him– _hard_ –against the chest, but he barely moves, laughing, his body solid and strong beneath her palms in the same way it had been that night they became lovers. 

He catches her hands in his, stilling them against his chest, drawing them down, intertwining their fingers, his laughter dying, staring at her, staring at her the way he had that night, his eyes watching her, his eyes saying things his mouth can't find the courage to say aloud and hers answering, her mouth just as afraid. She sees it now, his blue eyes, blue in the same way that Robert Barratheon’s had been.

“The other night . . . ” he’s whispering, frowning. “Do you— Did I—” He exhales forcefully. “Arya, I should have told you no.”

Now he really _is_ being an idiot and she tells him so. “Besides," she says, "I remember you seeming to _enjoy_  it.” He opens his mouth to speak, but she shoots him a look that has him swallowing whatever words he planned to say next. “Gendry, I came on to you, remember?” 

“Aye,” he says, but he doesn't seem entirely on board with that interpretation. “Because you thought you were going to die.” 

She shakes her head furiously. “Gendry is that what—” She could smack him. “That’s not why.” 

His eyebrows rise for a moment only to pinch back down half a breath later, a curious line on his mouth. He draws her closer, his face suddenly serious. “Then tell me why, Lady Stark,” he murmurs. 

His eyes are trained on hers, and those words- _Lady Stark,_ said as if they belong to some other language, a language that only the two of them know-stir something inside her, deep and low in her belly.

It takes a moment to find words. 

“I simply wanted to,” she finally says and she had. She had wanted to. She had wanted to from the moment she saw him on that horse, riding into Winterfell. 

 _Even before that,_ a voice chides. _You wanted to._

 _You were a stupid little girl then,_ another voice reminds her. 

He nods slowly. “You wanted to,” he echoes, sliding his arms around her waist and she can feel the words moving through the air, arriving warm on her skin.

“I should practice,” her mouth whispers absently, but her body draws closer to his, his mouth finding hers and this is different from the way they had kissed the night they became lovers. It isn’t hurried or desperate or competing with hands that are fumbling at laces and hems. It’s slow and saying words that their mouths never speak to each other. _I've_ _missed you. I've wondered about you. I worry about you. I might be in love with you._

He’s the one to end it.

“If I thought I could convince you to come with me,” he tells her. “I would ask you to.” 

She exhales, something sad wrapped inside the air. “I can’t, I—”

He presses his forehead to hers. “Still have your list,” he murmurs. “I know.”

And there are more words there, words she knows he wants to say, that he leaves unsaid.

 _But I wish that you didn’t_.

“You should practice, milady,” he finally tells her, kissing her one last time, and this one feels like goodbye as his fingertips graze her waist and he pulls away from her, some part of her not wanting him to leave, but they are moving in opposite directions now and she doesn’t know how to change it.

The names mattered. They mattered for Syrio and Yoren. They mattered for her father, for her mother, for Robb, for the niece or nephew she will never know, for Sansa. They mattered to the little girl that had sat perched at the feet of Baelor's statue, helpless, watching, as Ice began to sing and Sansa started to scream. 

She thinks about all of the names. The ones she has ended, the ones she changed her mind about, the ones that still remain. She thinks about what she will do when they’ve all been crossed off, where she will go, who she will be then.

 _Someone,_ a voice tells her and it sounds like Jaqen. _You will be someone._  

For so long nothing had mattered more than those names, _nothing_ , but watching now as Gendry walks away from her, she isn't so sure that's the truth anymore.  


When he’s nearly at the edge of the yard she calls his name and he turns.

“Sometimes,” she tells him, “different roads lead to the same castle.”

It isn’t a vow.

Maybe it’s a fantasy, one that they're fools to put their faith in. Maybe it’s a delusion. 

But it’s a possibility. A _chance._

He looks at her. She watches as his face softens and a slow smile climbs up his face and settles in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> Comments are my muse. Leave me one.


End file.
